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Gender Roles and Socialization

Gender Role Video

This video and the ones following examine gender roles from a variety of perspectives. From on-campus, you should be able to play this video in your browser. If you are off-campus, simply click on the video link to access the video.

Often the way in which see the world is dependent upon the religious lens through which we understand it. This chapter from the Handbook of the Sociology of Gender examines the role religion plays in our understanding of gender.

Additional Videos

Girls entering adulthood in the next decade will see more opportunities than today's women ever imagined. But will these girls stride confidently through newly opened doors, or are they destined to be stunted by societal messages that tell them females should be constantly agreeable, impossibly thin, and sexy above all else? Researcher and author Rachel Simmons examines the challenges facing young women as they surf the waves of 21st century adolescence in the 2010 Parents Choice Gold award-winning documentary, A Girls Life. Through a series of interviews with teenage girls, parents, psychologists, teachers, and social workers, the program explores cyberbullying, outright violence, gangs, the impact of sexual imagery in the media, and more. It is a wake-up call and a rare window into the day-to-day trials of todays teenage girls. Distributed by PBS Distribution. (60 minutes)

Is male youth violence one result of the societally imposed demand for men to seem strong and silent? In this ABC News 20/20 program, correspondent John Stossel; Dr. William Pollack, of the Harvard Medical School and author of Real Boys; and researchers from Emory University and the University of Connecticut explore why boys tend to repress their feelings. Using a real counseling session, experts demonstrate how to help boys express their feelings before they begin to act them out at school and at home in antisocial behavioror even in a shooting spree or suicide. (24 minutes)

Men and women of marriageable age are staying single in record numbers. The traditional family is fast becoming an anachronism. Could the 21st century be the era when the sexes go their separate ways? Through a series of filmed portraits and candid, often gritty interviews, this program looks at changing contemporary gender relations and expectations, exploring how men and women feel about issues such as dating, marriage, money, parenting, romantic love, feminism, and commitment. (87 minutes)

Men are marching on Washington, finding religion, taking on new community responsibilities, bonding with each other, weeping openly, and discussing their relationships. Just what are men up to, and what, exactly, has prompted this drastic change in behavior? Some say it is the natural outcome of the feminist movement and the resulting change in male roles. Perhaps. This program
profiles the new "mens movement," explores the various reasons why men become involved, and examines the implications for men and women in the 21st century. (29 minutes)

In Afghanistan, an old tradition allows families without a son to transform one of their daughters into a boy. These little girls, known as bacha posh, spend their early years dressed as boys and are accorded all the privileges and responsibilities of being malebut after puberty, they must revert to the female roles into which they were born. This program follows four girls who temporarily became the sons their parents longed for. Shabina has recently become bacha posh to help her disabled father and seems to be taking it all in stride. For Mariam and Naid, its time to change back, but both are desperate to hang on to their male identities. Lastly we meet Jack, a bacha posh who
refused to change back and who now heads for Europe. What new discoveries will the freedoms of the West invite? (53 minutes)

Books and eBooks

One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality. Thrilling and provocative, few other academic works have roused passions to the same extent. - Description from Syndetics